Oath officially becomes Verizon Media Group on January 8

A year and a half after giving birth to Oath, Verizon’s officially rebranding its media group as… wait for it… Verizon Media Group. It’s simple, it’s straightforward, it says what it does on the package — and most importantly, it makes a hell of a lot more sense than “Oath.”

Division head Guru Gowrappan confirmed that the changes will go into effect on January 8 — just in time for the kick-off of CES. The exec says the change is aimed at “representing our strong alignment as a core pillar of Verizon’s business.” Contrary to some initial reports spurred on by the (since changed) art accompanying the announcement blog post, Verizon tells me the big, purple Yahoo “Y” will (thankfully) not be the catchall logo for VZM.

A spokesperson for the company confirmed that an official Verizon Media Group logo is launching alongside the official rebranding on January 8. Then we’ll finally see if the company is keeping the infamous Oath colon around.

Again, good.

The less brand confusion the better. “‘Oath’ rhymes with ‘growth,’ and that’s our job, to grow,” then CEO Tim Armstrong told us at the brand’s launch. Clearly, the AOL+Yahoo = Oath equation never really added up for a brand that was initially positioned to be largely internally facing. But even without the rhyming, one assumes growth is still on the docket here.

The rise of the Verizon Media Group is mostly just a rebranding exercise — the portfolio, which includes HuffPost, Engadget, Tumblr and, yes, TechCrunch, should remain largely the same.